


Through the Keyhole

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling, Dark Castle, F/M, enchanted forest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 08:04:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9482102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: When a door that was always locked to her suddenly becomes open, Belle is not sure what to anticipate. What she finds inside is not at all what she expects.Written for the Monthly Rumbelling prompt: 'Dark Castle Forbidden Room'





	

**Rated:** G

**Prompt:** “Dark Castle Forbidden Room”

**Summary:**  When a door that was always locked to her suddenly becomes open, Belle is not sure what to anticipate. What she finds inside is not at all what she expects.

**Word Count:** 2584

**=====**

**Through the Keyhole**

The door was open. Just a little bit, just slightly ajar, not enough to be able to see inside the room. Belle paused with her hand on the knob. Ever since her arrival in the Dark Castle all those months ago, this door had never been unlocked, let alone opened. The room was off limits, Rumpel had told her tersely when she had inquired about it.

“Nothing in there of any interest to nosy little maids,” he snickered, tapping the end of her nose with one long finger as if to make a point.

“But if it’s nothing interesting, then surely there can’t be any harm in letting me see inside,” Belle countered with perfect logic. Rumpel had simply scowled and told her to get on with her chores, and under no circumstances was she to clean that room.

The brass knob still cool under her hand, Belle remembered the conversation. He hadn’t actually said that she couldn’t enter the room, just that she couldn’t clean in there. Although the fact the room remained locked all the time and even Rumpelstiltskin himself didn’t seem to go near it gave her pause. Given everything else that she had seen whilst living in the Dark Castle, she wouldn’t have put it past him to have been keeping some kind of dangerous magical creature in there, a creature that had suddenly escaped. She had to take a look, or else she might end up in even worse trouble when Rumpelstiltskin got home from wherever he was making his latest deal. No doubt if the room had been housing something that had since escaped, its loss would be blamed on her even if she hadn’t known of its existence.

Slowly, she opened the door in tiny degrees – just in case there was something vicious and full of teeth and claws on the other side. When she was not greeted with a cacophony of barking or growling or a gout of flame, she chanced to peer around the doorframe.

Belle was not entirely sure what she had been expecting to find, hideous monsters notwithstanding. Perhaps some kind of secondary laboratory to his workroom in the tower, storing his darkest and most dangerous potions, but there was no sign of anything magical in the place at all. Belle opened the door fully and stepped inside, pushing it closed behind her with a soft click. Hastily she turned and opened it a fraction again, checking that it had not locked her in as punishment for her trespass.

The room was lit dimly from a candelabra at one end, and it seemed to all intents and purposes to be an ordinary room. Indeed, the only odd thing about it was that it appeared to lack anything of Rumpelstiltskin’s own influence. His souvenirs from his travels and his deals could be found on display all over the Dark Castle, except in Belle’s own room, and that was only because Belle had put her foot down and rehomed all the items that had previously occupied her bedchamber. The books she could live with and had indeed kept, but the extremely dangerous-looking bright pink creeper plant had to go before it spewed its acidic pollen all over the bed. Rumpelstiltskin had acquiesced somewhat grudgingly, stating that for a young lady who had wanted adventure, she really had no sense of living dangerously.

“There’s a difference between going on an adventure and being burned to a crisp in one’s sleep,” Belle had pointed out.

Still, for all Rumpel’s grumblings of not having anywhere to put his lethal plants, this seemed to be a room untouched by his travels, and his magic. It was a bedchamber similar in size and furnishing to her own, but it had a sense of disconnection about it, as if it had been plucked from somewhere else and deposited within the Dark Castle. It didn’t fit, somehow. The blankets on the bed were made of thick, soft, undyed wool, as opposed to the richly coloured brocade and Agrabahan silks that were draped elsewhere in the castle. There was a spinning wheel in one corner, a fraction of the size of the one in the main hall where Rumpelstiltskin span his straw into gold. In the baskets beside it were puffs of soft, carded wool, rather than straw. The furniture was plain wood, unvarnished and worn with age.

Belle ventured further into the room, wondering why it was forbidden to her. Nothing in it seemed inherently magical or dangerous, or ‘unsettling to a lady’s sensibilities’ as Rumpelstiltskin described the torture chamber before casually instructing her to do her best with its blood-soaked walls. (He’d been trying to get a rise out of her; upon entering the dread dungeon it had quickly become clear that the walls were far from blood-soaked and the awful contraptions within had not been used for their intended gruesome purpose for many years, if at all.) If she was allowed into the dungeons and the store rooms full of myriad uncatalogued magics, and into Rumpel’s workroom itself, then why wasn’t she allowed into this benign chamber?

Belle went over to the fireplace, running her fingertips along the wooden mantel. It was clean and polished, not the slightest trace of dust, and Belle wondered. She certainly hadn’t been cleaning in here; had Rumpel put some kind of a spell on the place to keep it in stasis like this? Something caught her eye, over on a small table near the window, and she was on her way to take a look when Rumpelstiltskin’s voice made her freeze in her tracks, her blood turning to ice in her veins at the soft, dangerous tone in his words.

“So here you are, my nosy little maid,” he said. “I was worried that someone had broken in and made off with you.”

Belle turned to see him standing in the doorway.

“Oh, Rumpel, I, erm, I didn’t hear you come in.”

“You never do,” Rumpelstiltskin replied. “Especially when your head’s off in places that it shouldn’t be.”

He pointed behind him at the door. “This is not yours to explore.”

“Rumpel, I can explain,” Belle began, but her words seemed only to increase his ire.

“Get out, or I’ll lock you back in the dungeons on bread and water for a week. Let’s see if that will curb your enthusiasm for seeing behind locked doors.”

“The door was open!” Belle exclaimed, folding her arms. It was not the first time he’d threatened to lock her up again, and it would not be the last, but it was the first time that he had actually sounded as if he meant it. Still, she stood her ground, determined not to be cowed by him.

“That is not an invitation to explore where you are not wanted!” Rumpelstiltskin growled. “You shouldn’t be in here, dearie,” he said. “I expressly forbade it.”

“It’s just a room like any other!” Belle began to protest, but Rumpelstiltskin was already striding across the room and curling his fingers around her upper arm, guiding her firmly out of the chamber.

“It’s not the room that’s important!” Rumpelstiltskin shouted. “It’s the occupant!”

“What occupant?” Belle asked, but then the heavy door had slammed shut in her face and she heard the sharp clunk of the lock turning by magic. The room had been empty apart from Rumpel and herself, and surely if she had let some unknown prisoner escape, then Rumpelstiltskin would be kicking up far more of a fuss about that. She remembered the incident with Robin Hood soon after her arrival; Rumpel’s behaviour now didn’t make sense. Unless the room was destined for an occupant who had not yet arrived…. Making her way back to her own room, Belle wondered what kind of plans Rumpelstiltskin had in store now.

Come the next day, the incident in the locked room had been all but forgotten. Belle went about her work as normal, and Rumpelstiltskin chided her for ridiculous things like having an odd number of sugar lumps in the bowl at teatime, and it was almost as if the forbidden chamber had never come between them. All the same, Belle couldn’t put it out of her mind. When she had just been engaged in idle speculation about its contents, it hadn’t seemed that important to discover its true purpose, but now that she’d had a glimpse and been thrown off balance by the sheer normality of the room, she was desperate to find out more about it and its mysterious occupant.

For weeks, she paused outside the room every time she passed, checking the handle to see if Rumpelstiltskin had left it unlocked by accident again, but it was to no avail. Evidently her first excursion into forbidden territory had heightened his guard. She pressed her ear against the heavy wood, listening for any signs of life inside, but always came away with nothing. Perhaps Rumpel had added extra magical wards to keep her from prying further. Every day when she walked past the locked room, she kept expecting to see that the door had vanished all together.

Then, one day, completely out of the blue, she heard something as she was passing the door. It sounded like a sob. Belle paused, and listened at the keyhole. The light was such that she could not see in (she had already tried on several occasions even before entering the room properly) but she could just make out the sound of muffled weeping. The room, it appeared, finally had its mysterious occupant.

Belle dithered for a moment. Whoever it was, she was obviously not supposed to know of their existence here. All the same, whoever it was, they were evidently in distress, and Belle could not walk away from misery like that. Whatever this poor soul had done to land them imprisoned in Rumpel’s domain – it couldn’t have been anything too bad or they would have been confined to the dungeons – she had to give them some measure of comfort now that she knew they were there.

She knocked on the door softly, not wanting to attract any attention from Rumpelstiltskin. She had thought him in his laboratory in the tower, but since he could appear anywhere at a moment’s notice, she wouldn’t take any chances.

“Hello?” she called quietly through the keyhole. “Hello in there?”

The weeping stopped abruptly, and the room was silent. Belle took a deep breath, and looking along the corridor both ways for any sign of Rumpelstiltskin, began to speak again.

“It’s all right. I promise it’s going to be all right. I mean, you’re not in the dungeon, which is a good sign. I’ve been in the dungeons, but even then, it’s not so grim. It’s all right. I cried all the time when I first came here too, but Rumpel – Rumpelstiltskin – the Dark One – gave me a pillow. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but… I promise you that it’s not so bad. He’s not so bad. I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but I promise that it’ll be all right.”

Belle knew that she was in no position to be making such promises, as she had no idea what Rumpelstiltskin wanted with this prisoner, but she knew Rumpel himself, and she felt justified in her statements.

There was no response from inside the room, and Belle wasn’t entirely sure that she had expected one.

“I’m Belle,” she said finally. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She rose from her position crouched at the keyhole, and went about her chores, wondering who was on the other side of the door.

For the next couple of days, Belle made a point of listening at the door every time she passed it, but she never heard any sign of its occupant again. Cautiously she decided to try talking to whoever they were again; her voice seemed to have calmed them when they were weeping before, so perhaps she could provide some comfort again now.

“It’s going to be all right,” she whispered at the keyhole. “I promise.”

“What on earth are you doing?”

Rumpelstiltskin had appeared at the end of the corridor, and Belle stood from the keyhole hastily, smoothing down her skirt and trying to pretend that she hadn’t been doing anything out of the ordinary, but Rumpel’s expression showed no signs of anger, just pure confusion.

“Were you talking to the door?” he asked.

“Erm… No?” Belle hedged. Rumpelstiltskin didn’t look at all convinced and turned on his heel to stride away. As he rounded the corner, Belle thought she heard him mutter something about his maid going mad. She rested her head against the wooden door with a sigh, although she supposed that thinking she was talking to herself and giving her strange looks because of it was better than shouting at her for prying into forbidden rooms. She knelt at the keyhole again.

“I’ll come back later,” she whispered. “Keep your chin up.”

It was late into the night before Belle had the opportunity to return to the locked room and be sure that Rumpelstiltskin wouldn’t be around to catch her talking to his captive - or indeed talking to herself as he had previously thought. She was beginning to wonder whether there was actually anyone in the room at all, since he had seemed so genuinely puzzled as to why she was listening at the keyhole, rather than being angry with her. Perhaps they had only been held there for one night before being moved on, as part of a deal maybe.

But as she tiptoed along the corridor and crouched by the keyhole, she could once more hear weeping.

“It’s going to be all right,” she soothed. “Honestly. He’s really not the monster that everyone says he is.”

The muffled snuffling broke off, but Belle kept going.

“I know he’s got such a terrible reputation, but he’s really not as dark as people say. He’ll tell you he’s darker, but he’s really not. There’s good in him, but it’s buried beneath so many years of loneliness…”

She trailed off, unsure of how to go on and try to reassure this mysterious captive. But then, for the first time, Belle heard footsteps in the room. Cautious, tentative footsteps coming closer to the door.

“Why don’t you tell me your name?” she asked through the keyhole.

There was no response. Instead, completely unexpectedly, the door unlocked and opened.

Rumpelstiltskin was standing there.

“Oh.”

For a long time, Belle couldn’t say anything else.

“Did you mean that?” Rumpel asked. He wasn’t angry, there was just simple sorrow in his face.

“Was that you in there all the time?” Belle asked, but she could already tell that Rumpelstiltskin had indeed been the one weeping, from the pink tinge around his eyes and the wetness on his lashes.

“Did you mean what you said?” he repeated.

Belle took a deep breath and nodded, conviction unwavering.

“Every word.”

Rumpelstiltskin nodded and a smile quirked the corner of his mouth before he held out a hand to help her up off the floor.

“Rumpel…” she began, unsure of how to proceed in the wake of being completely wrong-footed like this. “What is this room for?”

Rumpelstiltskin looked down at their hands, still tightly clasped together, and then pulled her gently into the room.

“Belle, I think the time has come for you to learn about my son.”

 


End file.
